


Penny For Your Thoughts

by MxAlex



Series: The Gracious Gang of Gotham [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Age Changes, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - No Capes, Child Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kid Fic, Religion, tGGoG'verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 02:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6934294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MxAlex/pseuds/MxAlex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Selina Kyle is hungry and alone. It makes for loose morals.</p><hr/><p><strong>Age/Fusion/No Capes AU:</strong> Growing up half on the streets, Bruce Wayne and Kate Kane find themselves collecting angry orphans, dysfunctional survivors, snarky juvenile delinquents and reckless teenagers to build their suffering city a motley militia team of penniless but clever and dedicated vigilantes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Penny For Your Thoughts

**Author's Note:**

> **Series Notes:** this is an episode in a longer series - you will need to read the other stories for this to make sense. If you wish to subscribe, do so on the [series page](http://archiveofourown.org/series/413683) instead of on this story, as each episode is posted as a new work in the series, instead of as a new chapter.
> 
>  **Story Notes:** unbeta'd. This is just something to tide people over until part 2 of Trial by Fire is done - it doesn't spoil anything. I am sorry I can't always get these things out on time.
> 
>  **Warnings (Ch.1):** child abuse in the form of neglect and physical abuse, references to the suicide of an off-screen character and descriptions of the effect it has on a child. Religious guilt / conflict.

The first snowfall of the year came on the twelfth of November. It came cold, bitter and angry, as only the dead and the forgotten could be.

Selina Kyle was seven years old, too skinny with too many blonde curls and she was _so hungry_.

This wasn’t new. Hunger had dogged her steps for most of the past year, winding around her neck like a noose, a snake about to squeeze the life out of her. It never did, but she felt it all the same, so restricting, so terrifying.

(Would it kill her? Would it let her live? Would the hunger eat everything inside of her and leave only a hollow hole for all her fear to collect in?)

Selina was seven. She was smart - perhaps smarter than average, as was often the way in Gotham - so she knew things, knew the rules even though the worn-down adults in her life had said she would be too young to understand them for a long, long time.

Here were the rules; thou shalt not lie. Thou shalt hurt. Thou shalt not steal.

Here were the rules; if a man beat a woman until she went into the bathroom and cut open herself, you could be sure nobody would care.

Selina was seven. She had bruises, ugly things that decorated her arms and hurt all down her sides. At night, she lay awake and traced her fingers down her wrists.

Selina was seven. She knew many things, ugly things, but she didn’t know if death hurt. She thought it probably hurt less than it did to live.

Selina was seven. She was going to break a rule.

“Where is your mother, child,” asked the teacher, the officer, the clerk at the store. Selina did not say _in the ground, where daddy put her_ , because she’d said it once and her ribs still hurt from the aftermath of _that_.

“Where is your father, child,” asked the school nurse, the stranger on the street, the woman down the hall. _I don’t care_ , Selina did not say, because children should not wander without a hand to guide them.

 _Thou shalt not steal_ , Selina’s mother had said, a week, a month, a year before she left this world for the next on her own goddamn terms.

Selina was seven and she was so, so _hungry_.

It snowed on the twelfth of November, cold and bitter and raging just after the sun went down. Selina had laid on her bed and buried her arms under the covers, trying to keep the bare skin warm. Daddy had not paid the heating bills.

On the thirteenth, she went outside. It was a Saturday, so nobody would question her wandering around and she’d found her coat from last year, so she was only a little cold.

She had checked the fridge and the cupboards before she left, just in case, but there had been nothing once again. She’d gotten a light whack up the head instead and had been out the door before Kyle Senior could finish stumbling into the larger bedroom.

 _Little kitten, you must be good,_ Selina’s mother had said, _little kitten, if you sin, if you error, then He shall not allow you into Heaven and you will suffer, always suffer_. _Thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not hurt, thou shalt not steal._

 _Thou shalt not die, because then you will suffer_ , Selina thought, darting down dark alleys covered in grey snow, _thou shalt not live, because then you will suffer_. _So it be like heaven and hell on earth._

And what honestly, did God care for this child with nothing but hunger?

Park Row was oddly devoid of movement as she slipped past - usually there was at least someone nursing a cold coming or going or smoking a cigarette outside the clinic door while they waited to be seen. But this morning there was nothing, not even a light on.

It was odd, but she moved on, not interested, not trusting, not knowing.

A few blocks down and over was the Central Market. It was slow and sleepy from the weather, but most of the stalls had swept clean their usual spots and there were enough people to draw a crowd.

She slipped, so easy, like a cat winding through the grass. _Little kitten, you must make some noise, I never heard you coming_. Selina was smart, but she also had instincts, the sort that told her _duck your head, turn your shoulder, reach out-_

The money found itself in the palm of her hand without Selina really doing anything. She didn’t even look, didn’t even stop, didn’t even slow. She walked the entire length of Commercial Street at the calmest pace she could manage, until the market ended and the Abonnear Theatre appeared, advertising _The Omen_ and _Close Encounters of The Third Kind_ on a sign that hadn’t changed since 1978.

She slowed near the curb, feet cold from the slush seeping through her boots. There was something like a hiccup inside her chest, but when she opened her mouth it came out like a sob instead. And once the first one got out, the rest followed; heaving, wrecking cries as she dropped to the wet ground and wrapped her shivering arms around herself.

 _Thou shalt not steal_ , Selina’s mother had said.

But the priest at the funeral had said suicide was a sin as well. You weren’t suppose to undo God’s work. Their old priest hadn’t said that at all, but Selina’s father hadn’t taken them back to their old church since Selina had found her mother in the bathroom, cold as stone. Hadn’t asked their old priest to lead the funeral either. Hadn’t even talked to Mrs. Susan down the hall, who’d walked with them every Sunday for years and who used to watch Selina in the afternoons.

 _Perhaps_ , Selina reasoned, being only seven and already disillusioned in the ways of adults, the system and also God, _all sins lead to hell_. And if they did - if lying and hurting and stealing took you to hell, the same place you could go with a knife and too much pain, then perhaps it wasn’t all bad. Maybe Selina could see her mother again.

But she was seven years old and too hungry for such things. And to a child, many things are simple.

Selina was hungry, so she took the money - a ten dollar bill, some quarters and a bunch of pennies - to a store far enough away that nobody recognized the little Kyle girl. The sandwich was hot, the best she thought she’d ever tasted and she licked gloveless fingers while perched on the fire escape of a half-rotted apartment.

This, she reasoned, was simple. She was hungry, so she ate. She had no food, so she got some.

She had no money, so she took it from a table here and a pocket there and by the time it was Christmas, over a month later, she was so used to taking the things she needed that she didn’t even think about sin.

God didn’t care about forgotten kittens anyway.


End file.
